


With Woodbine and Ivy

by Herbcitty



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Asexual Character, M/M, Podfic Welcome, bunks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 06:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5994370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herbcitty/pseuds/Herbcitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, it goes like this. When Brendon was a kid, he doesn't even remember how old, maybe four or five, his older brother told him the top bunk bed is always haunted. At the time, he'd shared a room, and his brother, being a number of years older than him, didn't want small, trouble-attracting Brendon bothering his stuff. But Brendon didn't know that, or that ghosts didn't actually, y'know, exist. </p><p>((aka, a the-top-bunk-is-haunted fic))</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Woodbine and Ivy

**Author's Note:**

> ((Title is from John Martyn's Spencer the Rover, from a lyric that reads 'with woodbine and ivy his bed for to make'. Credit to whoever credit is due to for that. I thought I was being clever, at any rate)).
> 
> Prompt was from [here](http://creativichee.tumblr.com/miniscenario), "Brendon and Spencer fight over who will sleep where on the bunk bed." Unbeta'd.
> 
> Hope you enjoy reading this self indulgent panic! ace!fic as much as I enjoyed writing it.

So, it goes like this. When Brendon was a kid, he doesn't even remember how old, maybe four or five, his older brother told him the top bunk bed is always haunted. At the time, he'd shared a room, and his brother, being a number of years older than him, didn't want small, trouble-attracting Brendon bothering his stuff. But Brendon didn't know that, or that ghosts didn't actually, y'know, exist. So it stuck. Didn't help that his brothers both occasionally scared him to keep up the belief.

It hadn't really been much of a big deal for the first nearly twenty years of his life. His brother let him take the bottom bunk out of the kindness of his heart, and when he'd moved out the bunks had been replaced with a normal one-story bed. He didn't much stay over at other people's houses (the people at the church group didn't like him and he didn't like them back enough for that, and the people he knew at school he wasn't close enough with). And then when he got into his classmate, Brent's, friends' band (!!!) sleeping over was mostly on couches or floors and that once, sharing with Spencer, their drummer. Vans and floors and couches were what happened on tour - no bunks.

But now they're famous enough to have a _tour bus_. Brendon still thinks this is a little wild, like. They have that many fans? To warrant an actual tour bus??? What. It's mostly because of Pete, he believes, but they must sound somewhat good, at least. Brendon doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth; things have never really worked out this well in the past.

And tour buses mean bunk beds. Brendon had mostly let his fear of top bunks fade into irrelevancy, but here it is, back and as mighty as ever. Brendon might be famous and shit, but he's still got this irrational fear of top-bunk-ghosts some fifteen years later (thanks, big bro). Ryan claims the top one on the right, after Brent behind him claims shot gun on the middle. Spencer, who can't be bothered climbing all the time, goes to take the middle. Brendon sees this coming though and wheedles past him to dump his stuff down before Spencer can.

Spencer is not amused, and looks at Brendon in his scowl-y face that Brendon is quite used to. Brendon attracts accidents, and Spencer tends to scowl when they happen, like it's _Brendon's_ fault! (So he's not looking where he's going or is too busy talking or paying attention to something else, or he just _forgot,_ okay. That totally doesn't mean it's _his_ fault. Except it kinda does.) Anyway.

So Spencer scowls, and bitches him out, because it's four o’clock in the morning and there was no time for him to get all his shit to the meeting point _and_ make sure Ryan was organised _and_ make coffee.

And it turns into an actual fight. But like, a harshly whispered fight, because Ryan can be kinda mean sometimes, and Brendon doesn't want to have to deal with him too.

They continue the fight in the front lounge after Brent grumbles at them. And then at some point one of the other people on the bus tells them to shut up, they've got stuff to do (it's the first day of tour, so mostly travelling, but. There's always shit that has to be done to make things go smoothly, and while Brendon doesn't know what a lot of it is, he's not gonna mess with it. Right now, there isn't actually, the dude just doesn't want to hear them whispering loudly together - it's annoying). So instead of whispering, they stop talking to each other all together.

But Brendon is also kinda tired (it's five in the morning and he got exactly two hours sleep last night, too jittery to drop off, as he is before tours. Spencer is much the same). He ends up falling asleep sitting on the couch, and Spencer does too. They fall into the middle together, Brendon sleeping on a sleeping Spencer's shoulder.

(Ryan takes a picture of them when he wanders through at closer to normal-person-functioning-hour. You never know when blackmail material might be handy.)

They don't talk for the whole day. Ryan rolls his eyes every time one of them says something like "Ryan, tell Spencer to pass me the [whatever it is Brendon wants right then]".

Brent thinks it's a stupid thing to fight over, but Brendon and Spencer both maintain it is an important decision. Spencer was there first, he has the right. Brendon just won't take the top bunk, and he's refusing to tell anyone why.

When it's night, and time to retire (their first show isn't until tomorrow), Spencer goes first. Brendon doesn't think anything of it, still trying (and failing) to beat Brent on the xbox. When Brendon goes he's mostly forgotten about it. But when he's got changed and come back to the bunks, there is Spencer. Mostly asleep, and in Brendon's middle bunk, while their stuff is on the bottom one. Spencer looks cute like this, Brendon thinks, when he's sleepy and not so scowl-y or worry-y or whatever else that makes Spencer seem less soft than when he's less conscious. But then Brendon ignores the thought in favour of being indignant.

The bunks are, honestly, pretty tiny. The only way to settle this, Brendon has decided, is to clamber into the bunk and squeeze in beside Spencer. He wakes Spencer up. But not entirely, and Spencer, who is too tired for this shit, mostly just mumbles and cuddles into Brendon a bit.

Brendon sleeps.

He wakes when he hits the floor the next morning. His elbow hurts, and he turns to glare at Spencer. Spencer is still asleep, his face pushed into the pillow. Brendon's glare softens a little. Despite being pushed out of the bunk, Brendon feels like it's the best sleep he's had in a long time.

He can hear movement in the lounge, so it's not too early. He gets up off the floor. Then he grabs the pillow off the top bunk and hits Spencer with it. Spencer groans.  
'That's what you get for pushing me on the floor, asshole.'  
Spencer grumbles a bit more, and Brendon leaves him to it.

They don't discuss their sleeping arrangements that day. At least they're talking though, it'd possibly be a bit hard if half the band wasn't speaking, Brendon thinks. He forgets about it even, on stage that night. It's the first show of tour though, so it's pretty intense. The celebration after's pretty intense too.

They don't talk about it for the next three days either. But because Spencer is a stubborn fucker when he wants to be, and Brendon absolutely refuses to go on the top bunk (even to snuggle up with Ryan, though Spencer's much better - Ryan is all elbows and knees and gets snappy, whereas Spencer is soft and curvy and puts up with him more), Brendon ends up sharing with Spencer. Brendon finds that actually, he doesn't really mind. Spencer is warm and gives good hugs and. Brendon's stomach has started being weird around him, all flip-flop-y when Spencer smiles at Brendon and lets Brendon hang all over him. Brendon carefully doesn't think about it.

On the morning of the fourth day, Brendon wakes up before Spencer does. Usually he'd get up and go and eat the cereal in the cupboard that Ryan's told him not to touch but. Today he's warm and comfortable and Spencer has an arm slung around his waist and. Brendon sort of doesn't want to move. So he doesn't. He thinks maybe this is less about the top bunk being haunted and more about Spencer now.

Brendon's the first one awake - there's no noise in the lounge. He lies awake beside Spencer for maybe half an hour and there's still no noise. He tells himself he's staying where he is right now because he doesn't want to wake anyone else.

Spencer wakes next. He pulls his arm off Brendon and shoves him - hard - onto the floor. Brendon hits his knee on the panelling and hisses in pain, trying to be quiet but mostly failing.  
Spencer huffs out a breath, and then harshly whisper-shouts at Brendon, kind of angrily, 'We're talking about this, right now.'  
Brendon's kinda maybe a little bit intimidated by his tone, and lets himself be hauled along when Spencer clamps a fist around his wrist. Spencer's skin is warm against Brendon's, and he can feel the callouses caused by drumming.

'What's wrong with the top bunk,' Spencer demands, as soon as they're sat on a couch in the lounge.  
Brendon shifts, nervously. It sounds ridiculous in his own head, it'll sound more ridiculous out loud.  
He lies. 'Uh. I, um, fell out of one as a kid and am deathly afraid of falling out again?'  
Spencer rolls his eyes. 'The ground's not that hard. I pushed you out twice already. It's only five feet more, you do more dangerous shit all the time.'  
He still looks expectant, and so Brendon opens his mouth to defend himself. 'Because I'm in love with you and want to share?' is what comes out instead. His voice is loud in relative silence of the bus. Ryan, in the bunks, snores. Brendon feels his cheeks heat because - that's not even true, Brendon definitely hadn't meant to say that. And now it sounds like the truth.  
Spencer blinks back at him, face carefully blank.

The actual truth is less mortifying than this, Brendon decides. Spencer wasn't supposed to know about this stupid crush that's somehow infected him, Brendon wasn't actually going to do anything about it.  
'I'm, uh- not actually?' he tries, 'top bunks are haunted, I can't go in the top bunk.' Brendon hears Brent snort, and Ryan's muffled laughter. And oh shit, Ryan's totally heard this whole conversation.  
Spencer's not laughing, but he's also gone bright red in trying not to. When Brendon raises a challenging eyebrow, Spencer guffaws, laying a hand on his own face like he can't quite believe Brendon is for real right now.  
'Let me get this straight,' Spencer says when he recomposes himself, 'we've been sleeping together for three days because you're _afraid of ghosts_.' And then he starts laughing again.

Ryan drifts through at this point, and he's still laughing too. 'Sleeping together, huh Spencer?' he says.  
Spencer glares. 'Not like that, you dick,' he tells Ryan.  
'Well, why not? Brendon just declared his love for you,' Ryan taunts.  
Spencer's scowl-y face is back in force. 'You _know_ why not,' he scathes. Brendon feels like he's missing something.  
'Brendon totally didn't mean that,' he defensively tells Spencer and Ryan, who're doing their weird communicating-without-words thing. 'Mostly,' he adds quieter, to himself.  
'Mostly?' Ryan gives Spencer a sharp look. 'See, Spencer,' he says, like his word is final, then stalks off to the kitchenette.

The conversation ends there, and Brendon is kinda thankful for that. They follow Ryan when Brendon's stomach loudly reminds everyone he hasn't eaten in way too long.

This doesn't really solve Brendon and Spencer's bunk problem. Brendon thought Spencer would've just taken the top bunk and declared Brendon childish and himself mature (as many of the arguments between the band were solved). He didn't though, and Brendon wonders why. It isn't like Spencer has a ridiculous crush growing on Brendon, like Brendon does on Spencer, Brendon thinks. There isn't really any reason for Spencer to not have complained or to've stopped being stubborn on the issue.

After the show that night, Brendon thinks Spencer _has_ given up on it when Spencer climbs into the top bunk. He's certainly forgotten about the Brendon-(not)-being-in-love-with-Spencer and the secret-reason-Spencer-won't-sleep-with-Brendon-that-Ryan-and-Spencer-know parts of that morning's conversation. When Brendon goes to get into the middle bunk, Spencer sticks an arm out and grabs his shirt.  
'Get up here, Bren. We're curing you of your ghost thing.'  
So Brendon scrambles up, using energy he feels he no longer has.

Now that the adrenalin has worn off, Brendon is bone tired from the show. But Spencer is warm and Brendon snuggles in beside him. It's been only three nights, but Brendon's got used to this. He likes having Spencer beside him as he sleeps. It doesn't take long for him to start drifting off, really.

Spencer starts whispering to him when he's just about asleep, and if Brendon were more conscious he'd probably have realized that was on purpose.  
'Y'know,' Spencer's breath ghosts warm across his cheek, 'I don't really mind that much that you're in love with me or whatever. I kinda fancy you too, but. I'm asexual and you shouldn't saddle yourself into a relationship with me, that's just not fair on you.'  
Spencer keeps mumbling for a while, but Brendon stops hearing his words. He just hears Spencer's voice, rough with tiredness, and feels the vibrations of it in his body. He's too close to sleep to connect much meaning with what Spencer is saying.

The next day Brendon doesn't say anything, doesn't even remember Spencer whispering to him. Spencer asks if he's got over his fear of haunted bunks yet, teasing, and Brendon sticks his tongue out at him. They get on with the day.

Brendon doesn't remember until later that day entering a town before the city with that night's venue in, when they drive past a group of people wearing rainbows on their clothes and Brent rolls his eyes and makes a comment. Brendon excuses himself and goes to find his laptop.  
He can hear the others talking, and Brent loudly say 'Oh, shit, is he?' It occurs to him that he's never actually let on to the rest of his band that he's anything other than straight. Then again, he'd never seriously considered it either, not until he started feeling weird around Spencer, which he didn't say either. He's always looked at guys with nice hair or nice hands or nice eyes or liked the way the muscles in their backs moved as they took off their shirts and thought nothing of it, thought everyone did that. Brendon finds he doesn't care that much anyway - his parents already made their decision about him when he chose the band over the church. And it's just Spencer he feels like this about, and Spencer's _Spencer_ , so. Whatever, really.

Brendon sits down in the middle bunk and types 'asexual' into aol.com. His memory is kinda fuzzy (he was nearly asleep, after all), but he thinks that's what Spencer said. For the next hour and a half, he reads webpages and doesn't move. There's a wikipedia page with not much on it, a page with the title AVEN with a bit more on it, and he finds a couple of livejournal posts about it too. The livejournal posts and forums of AVEN make more sense to him, the others use big words and fancy terms that Brendon doesn't understand enough to get what they're talking about. And Brendon also sort of gets why Spencer's never mentioned it.

Spencer comes to get him when they get to the venue, and he's wearing his 'I don't know if I want to do this, but I'm a mature adult and everyone else voted I do it' face. He gets the same one when they have to tell Pete or security or someone else that something went wrong, and Brendon is confused. In reading all these articles and entries about people who don't want to have sex with people, Brendon's forgotten what made him go look them up in the first place.

'You alright?' Spencer asks.  
Brendon closes the laptop, hastily. He doesn't want Spencer to know what he's been looking up. He nods, 'Yeah, of course! Why wouldn't I be?'  
Spencer rubs the back of his neck, awkwardly. 'Uh,' he says, 'because you ran off earlier, right after Brent made that comment about those gay protesters or whatever they were.'  
Brendon remembers, now that Spencer's reminded him, but lets the silence go on for too long by accident.  
'You, uh, know we don't care if you are gay, right? Ryan was kidding around yesterday,' Spencer tells him, as the bus stops moving.  
Brendon sets his laptop down on the bed and gets up. Spencer is still watching him, in a calculating way that makes Brendon kind of uncomfortable.  
Brendon hugs him, trying to be like he would've been yesterday or the first day of tour, but feels like he mostly fails. 'I know,' he says, and gets go of Spencer before heading toward the lounge.

Spencer climbs into the top bunk after the show, but Brendon doesn't join him. Instead, he gets into the middle bunk, and thinks about everything. After what feels like hours (and probably is because Brendon's heard someone's watch beep twice now), and he's still not asleep, Brendon gives up. He decides this requires drastic measures, and rolls out of bed into the hallway. Then he pulls himself up into Spencer's bunk and settles under the covers beside him like Brendon's done for the entire tour so far. Spencer stirs, not quite waking. Brendon presses a kiss to his jaw, shhing him back to sleep. Brendon's last thought before he, too, falls asleep is that sharing with Spencer is the best, and he's going to do it as much as possible.

Brendon falls out of the bunk again in the morning. He curses, loudly, not caring who he wakes up this time. That extra five feet _does_ make a difference. A painful one.

Brendon makes sure Spencer is aware of this, later. They're in the back lounge because Spencer wanted quiet while the others were playing on the xbox, and Brendon's been hanging around, just waiting for an opportunity to talk to Spencer alone.  
'And even though I didn't mean to declare my love for you, like Ryan said,' Brendon continues, thinking that this is much easier when he knows how Spencer feels, 'it's mostly because I'm pretty sure I don't love you yet? I am pretty gone on you though, so. I'm not saddling myself into a relationship with you, I like you for you, regardless of what you will and won't do. I'm not gonna make you do anything you don't wanna.'  
Spencer's been frowning at half written drumlines in his notebook while Brendon's been speaking but now looks over him. Spencer's expression's shifted to somewhere between confused and caught out.  
'Uh,' he says. Brendon has no idea what Spencer is thinking and decides that, actually, this is just as scary when he knows how Spencer feels.

The silence is unnerving, so Brendon keeps talking, to try and make it _less_. 'Brent reminded me, yesterday, so I looked it up, that's why I left. It's okay that you're not straight, too. We don't care either- or at least, Ryan and I don't, I guess.'  
Brendon fidgets, looks everywhere but Spencer. 'You, uh, looked it up?' Spencer sounds kind of amazed, like he doesn't believe anyone would do that for him.  
Brendon shrugs, meeting Spencer's gaze again. 'Yeah?'  
Spencer's mouth twitches into a fond half-smile, before he leans forward and kisses Brendon. Brendon gasps a little, even though he was sort of expecting this to happen. He's kissed girls before, girls wearing slimy lipgloss and staining lipstick, girls with soft full lips. But none of them kissed like Spencer does. It's a little unsure at first, and Brendon can sort of taste the coffee Spencer drank earlier, but it's easy. He pushes Spencer back onto the couch, climbs into Spencer's lap, his knees on either side of Spencer's thighs, the notebook pushed aside. Spencer smiles into Brendon's mouth, and Brendon pulls away.  
'Dude,' Brendon says, ' _Dude_.'  
Spencer laughs, his mouth swollen, smile goofy. 'Dude,' he confirms, getting up. He wraps an arm around Brendon's waist for support as he stands, pushing Brendon to his feet. 'C'mon, let's go kick Brent's ass.'


End file.
